Swear words from science fiction

Science fiction, whether print, TV, or movies, has a tradition of making up new swear words (or sometimes borrowing them from languages other than the one the SF is written/spoken in). Part of this is the awareness that language isn't always the same, and in the future, or in another galaxy, the same concepts wouldn't serve as cuss words. (It also allows the writers to have characters swear without being censored, sometimes by being only very slightly different from everyday swear words.)

uucp said, "It seems worth noting that 'belgium' was a curse word in only the U.S. editions. In the original text, he used the word 'Fuck.'" And hramyaegr adds: "Might want to tack on that he was pressured to change Fuck to Belgium by the American publisher, because Americans wouldn't be able to handle having fuck in the book. Which is oh, so gloriously ironic." But g026r notes that "Actually, Belgium as a swear word predates the third book. It makes at least one appearance in the radio shows (I believe Fit the Tenth) when Zaphod exclaims "Oh belgium, man, belgium!" (Having just dug out my copy of the radio show scripts, I can verify that it is Fit the Tenth in which Zaphod uses Belgium. It's actually prefaced by the entire spiel about it being the only unspeakable obscenity.)" So this is presumably a substitute swear word originally cooked up for British radio before being used for American publishing.

From Battlestar Galactica via Quizro: frack and felgercarb. Maylith notes that 'the new version of Battlestar Galactica has produced "Frack me", said by Starbuck as she entered into a flat spin after her Viper Mark 2 was struck by a raider, during the episode "Act of Contrition". (I think I've heard it a number of other times, too, but that's the one I can reference with assurance.)' and from 'Episode "Tigh me up, Tigh me down". -- "Don't frack with me."' And Halcyonide was observant enough to point out this amusing tidbit: "Frack is the name of the IKEA-made shaving mirror in Adama's cabin. A google for "+Ikea +frack" appears to confirm this."

From Anne McCaffrey's Pern books: (taken from the altogether too cutesy "DragonDex" at the end of "The DragonRiders of Pern")
"By the Egg," "By the first Egg," "By the Egg of Faranth," "Scorch it," "By the shards of my dragon's egg," "Shells," "Through Fall, Fog, and Fire," and "Shards."

gypsyprincessky notes that in, "We can't forget Delenn's use in JMS's Babylon 5 of "Abso-fragging-lutely, dammit." Might this humble chronicler add that ultra-proper Ambassador Delenn picked up that phrase from Captain John Sheridan (whom she later married). There's also the Centauri oath "Great Maker!" and the only-once-seen flarn, which is a foodstuff apparently comparable to liver, according to Susan Ivanova.

"What do you mean you didn't notice? What am I, chopped flarn? I mean, granted, I don't have any interest in you, you don't have any interest in me. But if you're going to come barging in here in the middle of the night, the least you could do is say "Nice outfit, Ivanova," and *then* go on a tear!"

Also according to this really neat source (http://fan.starwars.com/WermosGuide2Huttese/Dictionary.html), other Huttese swear words include Keepuna! (loosely translated as "Shoot!" ;) ). There will probably more in the future, since Ben Burtt will have to come up with more dialogue in Huttese for Episode II and Episode III."

'In the Chanur Saga sci-fi series by C.J. Cherryh, the Hani, a race of feline humanoids, have some interesting curses. The clearest are "Gods!" (since the Hani are polytheistic) and "Gods rot you" (since the Hani have no concept of Hell in their religion). As the Hani have a matriarchal society, "Gods grant you sons" is a curse. Being carnivores, "egg-sucker" is an insult implying that you've grown so old you could only survive by sucking on eggs, rather than eating meat. "Ragged ears" implies that you're bad at unarmed (but definitely clawed) combat, so your ears get torn during fights. But the weirdest one, which Cherryh has never offered an explanation for, is "Gods be feathered!"' (Thanks to khym chanur for these.)

'From the Sten series by Chris Bunch and Alan Cole: Clot - roughly equal to "f*ck." Unfortunately sounds rather silly used as a swearword. "Clotting idiot", "What the clot?!" or "Clot you" don't seem to have quite the same ring to them as their translated equivalents, in my opinion. Not to be confused with the contemporary usage, which is a noun used to describe an idiot or fool. Drakh - an all-purpose expletive roughly equal to "Shit!" Interestingly similar to Judge Dredd's "Drokk!". Unlike 'clot', this actually sounds relatively good said out loud. Usage is the same as its real-world equivalent - eg, "We're up to our necks in drakh now." See drek and dreck. Variations on "By my mother's beard!" and "By my father's frozen buttocks!", both originating with the Bhor, a species of intensely hairy humanoidaliens hailing from an ice planet.' (Thanks to CamTarn for these.)

ataraxia points out that in Red Dwarf, "Holly uses "gordon bennett" for "god," {but Rose Thorn tells me that "Gordon Bennet is an increasingly uncommon, but still well-established non-rude curse in the UK." discofever's writeup at Gordon Bennett! goes into detail on the origin of that one.} and the "Lobo" comic books have a lot of good ones (like "bastidges"), since they were supposed to be all edgy with the bad language but didn't actually use any swearing." Speaking of Lobo, "frag" is also used there, ^Davion^ informed me.

Lady_Day notes that 'Farscape has "frell", meaning "fuck". e.g. Aeryn: "Frell!" John: "mmmm" Aeryn:" No, bad frell!"'
p03 says that 'Farscape also has "dren" => "shit"' and '"For Yot's sake!" (spoken by Dom. Rigel)' and '"fennick" =~ asshole and "tralc" =~ bitch.' (Uberbanana says "tralc" is "a substitute for whore not bitch. This could be debated but the word is most commonly used when refering to a woman's looseness.") locke baron adds that "another one from Farscape is 'hezmana' - roughly translates to 'hell', though might be closer to 'devil' or 'fuck' in certain contexts. It's a Luxan word, IIRC." WolfKeeper points out that http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/farscape/swearing/ has a far more complete list of Farscape swearing (which I won't reproduce here).

^Davion^ adds 'KODT uses many colourful ones such as "Gawd" in place of "God", "Dang" replaces "Damn", "Frikin'" replaces "Fucking" while "Firp" replaces "fuck". Pratchett normally turns "God" to "gods" in his novels, due to polytheism on Discworld, which also has the wonderful "poot". 2000'AD's Sinister Dexter shows us "Ay Vayase!" which see

Stavr0 points out that there are "hefty doses of Cantonese in Firefly," for example ""Ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng" translated as "frog-humpin' bastard."

vebelfetzer says 'Firefly also makes use of the term 'humped,' meaning 'screwed' or 'fucked.' As in: "We're humped if they find us at all!"'

Master Villain says that '"Cruk" was the swearword of choice in the "New Adventures," which are the Post-TV series Doctor Who novels. Amazingly the writers
didn't even try to hide what it meant, ie: "If it's female, you'll cruk it" right after an alien is leering over the
female lead.'

jerwin tells me that 'In Greg Bear's Anvil of Stars, "slick" is used as a drop-in replacement for "fuck."'

randombit says informs me that "frag is also used in Beast Wars (where the meaning is either 'fuck' or 'kill', depending on the context), and in the first episode of the Cowboy Bebop(probably only in the English dub)."

Arin says that in the X-Force comic, 'Several unusual curses have been used by Shatterstar, a warrior from the extra-dimensional Mojoworld: "Fekt" (apparently meaning 'fuck') or "Za's vid" (I'm not sure on this one).'

Devon_Hart says 'There's a hilarious scene in The Fifth Element, right after Bruce Willis says "Negative, I am a meat popsicle." The guy who lives next to him moves right up to the screen and says,"SMOKE YOU."'

Rikmeister says "games workshop (the guys who produce warhammer 40k) produce a series of books called gaunt's ghosts, utilising three interesting swear words: Feth (Tree god of the planet Tanith, presumably based on fuck), kek (unexplained word from the planet caligula) and Gak (similarly unexplained curse from the planet Verghast and more specifically the city Vervunhive). all of them have derivatives, including Feth/Gak/Kek-head."